Virtual Archive

Hold in Leipzig on 17–19 April 2023, the international conference on »Looking at the Ghetto ...« commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 80 years ago. The keynote lecture was given by the renowned historian Jan Tomasz Gross. For the conference, the Dubnow Institute cooperated with Beit Lohamei Haghetaot – the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum; the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw; the Haifa Interdisciplinary Unit for Polish Studies, University of Haifa; Moreshet – the Mordechai Anielevich Memorial Holocaust Study and Research Center; the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN, Warsaw; and the Professorship for Slavic Literature and Cultural Studies, Leipzig University. The conference was funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation.

Hold at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin on November 29–30 2022, the international conference on »The Hochschule« marked the 150th anniversary of the »Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums,« and commemorated its closure by the Nazi regime 80 years ago. The recordings of the lectures are accessible via the YouTube channel of our cooperation partner, the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem.

All recordings on the YouTube channel of the LBI Jerusalem

The annual conference took place from 27 to 29 June 2022 in cooperation with the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL), Berlin, and the Professorship for Slavic Jewish Studies at the University of Regensburg (UR) at the Literaturhaus Leipzig. You can find the complete programme here.

Digital Lecture Series in the Summer Semester 2022

In cooperation with the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig and Brill Deutschland – Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht/Böhlau Verlag, the Dubnow Institute organised a book presentation with the historian Prof. Dr. Yfaat Weiss. In conversation with Thomas Sparr, she presented her latest publication »Niemandsland« and used the Mount Scopus in Jerusalem to unfold the history of the city after war and division.

The interdisciplinary lecture series took place in the form of a lecture series hosted in cooperation with the Leipzig University Library. It adopted an object-centered approach to fundamental questions and methodological challenges in provenance research on key book collections in the field of Jewish history and culture. The colloquium highlighted processes of cultural migration and mobility, questions of social inclusion and exclusion, and especially issues of genocide and histories of destruction, ruptured property relationships, and landscapes of memory after 1945. Through this perspective, we discussed the overarching possibilities and limitations of provenance research. In order to cultivate a comprehensive and multi-perspectival point of entry, the speakers, who work in university research, libraries, and specialist collections, presented innovative approaches and recognized methods. Two lectures were held digitally due to the Corona pandemic and are available via YouTube.

Die jüdischen Friedhöfe in Wien zeugen von der über achthundertjährigen jüdischen Geschichte und Gegenwart der Stadt. Sie sind materielle Archive, die Inschriften der über 100 000 erhaltenen Grabmäler wertvolle Quellen. In seinem jüngst erschienen Buch wagt der in Wien ansässige Historiker Tim Corbett eine umfassende Analyse des Werdegangs der Wiener jüdischen Sepulkralkultur vom Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwart, die zugleich ein neues Licht auf die jüdische Geschichte der Stadt wirft. Im Gespräch mit Arndt Engelhardt vom Dubnow-Institut erzählt er, auch anhand von visuellem Material, vom wechselhaften Stellenwert der Friedhöfe in gesellschaftspolitischen Diskursen, von ihrer zeitweisen Zerstörung und von ihrer Bedeutung als Orte der Bewahrung zeitgenössischer Verständnisse von Kultur, Gemeinschaft und Zugehörigkeit.

This conference focuses on the history of twentieth-century American Jewish political thought in a transnational dimension. It brings together scholars from the United States, Germany, and Israel to discuss how American Jews articulated in words and deeds the multiple and often conflicting perspectives about their own situation in America and their relationship to the Jewish people worldwide.

Preceded by a lecture series on »American Jewish Political Thought: Transnational Varieties,« which took place from April to June 2021, the conference carries forward the exploration of this theme by further looking at the diverse ways in which American Jews, through their communal institutions and organizations, articulated a variety of ideas about their responsibilities for Jews and Jewish life at home and abroad. At the same time, it raises the question of how their actions, in turn, reflected concerns the Jews of the United States had for themselves and their place in American life. Being aware of the wide-ranging varieties of American Jewish political thought, the speakers will emphasize both common concerns among American Jews and widely divergent views of what to do and how.

This joint event of the Dubnow Institute and the Goldstein-Goren Center at New York University will contribute to the broadening of a transnational perspective within the field of American Jewish history. Moreover, the organizers seek to strengthen transatlantic scholarly ties and imagine future cooperation, which will shed new light on American Jewish political thought in so many places around the world.

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